Day Two, From My Rented Hospital Bed

And what a wonderful it is. The bluest of blue skies greeting me encircling the face of my bedside angel, ready to give me that medicine she knows I need at six o'clock am. Her voice gently wakes me from a medium stupor as I try to understand my surroundings, but she gives me time to familiarize with the environment. Soon, sleep will overtake me again, and that, too, is wonderful, but I pause, thinking of those that passed the doors that I've just passed - overwhelming.

How many had such a supportive team? I really do not think the care was differently administered. I have come to beleve that it comes from attitude. What attitude you carry into a given set of circumstances in large determine a whole set of new factors, and on and on. These attitudes are products of our growing up - the normal life experiences we'd hoped we had shared. I hope that a brief discussion of thee failure that may follow will help clarify. Sleep on the one hand, joker's to my right, here I am stuck in the middle with you - I think light dawns. Until next time.

Changes, Again!

No work on Friday led to an five-day stay at INOVA Fair Oaks Hospital. A great experience, truly. Admitted on September 23 and discharged on September 27. So, while we don't yet know what caused the swelling in the legs and feet, the doctors we able to bring the swelling more under control. More to follow later. Thank you for all your love.

On the Move

Now, O God, may these words put down here be your words for encouragement for all those who read them. May they be a source of your strength, your comfort and your presence as they navigate the storms of life. God I ask that we know you faithful, just, and merciful in all your plans and dealings with us. Might we remember that you loved us, have called us from our darkness in which we rebelled against you, given us inheritance as a redeemed people through the work of Christ on the cross, and now we wait for the culmination of your redemptive history, when you will restore to us the life for which we were created, life everlasting in your presence. This, Lord, is our constant, fervent prayer. Amen.

What a week! I am not certain how much more I can handle. God is moving, I have clear evidence of that. First was the revelation about this new trial that seemed just right for me. Since that appointment, my pain management has been working. Mostly, that is and up through Wednesday. What pain I've had is primarily in my calves, which have begun to cramp, but today I did have a little back pain. Then, Thursday afternoon I get a call from Dr Pishvaian at Georgetown. From the labs that were taken on Monday, the liver enzymes have dropped nearly into a normal range. This means not just one option for trial, but two, so long as the liver enzymes stay on the downward turn. All without medical intervention.

What an awesome display of God and his sustaining work.

Give Me Your Words, O God

WOW! That is all I can say, one day after our appointment with Georgetown and Dr Pishvaian. We've been to Georgetown nearly a handful of times since our first meeting in February, that day which initially found me increasingly apprehensive. I believe I also mentioned that our next visit left me with a greater sense of dread, primarily over what I perceived as second-guessing and hard questioning. In retrospect, I feel much differently about all our appointments. As in the case with Dr Felice, we have been more than pleased with the level of care we've received each step along the way.

We have known and expected that this journey, just as life daily, is a marathon, not a sprint. Ultimately, we are to ""Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!," Psalms 46:10. God is always at work, bringing about his redemptive plan of salvation, restoration and reconciliation. His intervention on our behalf is according to his time table, not the immediacy of our desires. And we are so spoiled, wanting even what may be truly good (to us), and we want it yesterday. We must experience God as who he has revealed himself to be in Scripture - unchangeable, unshakable, the most wise.

So, back to the WOW! We sat and listened to what any reasonable person would take as bad news in terms of trials available to me that are limited almost to nothing, simply because of this elevated liver enzyme. We did take it as bad news, yet we have built no expectations for this visit, save to ask a few questions, and see if there is plan moving forward. Without any idea of further possibilities, God showed what he had been doing since our failed attempt for the earlier trial.

There is a trial, set to begin in about three weeks (remember I have to have three weeks of no treatment once the radiation was completed (September 8) before a trial could commence. This particular trial focuses on the promising nature of a drug used for most other cancers - just not mine. But it shows promises of working against colorectal cancer, and the elevated liver enzyme is NOT lthe worry it would be with other care. Did I mention that it is available when I would be ready to begin? Did I tell you that I am the only trial candidate on their roster that meets the criteria for this trial? Did you know they had already scheduled me against this trial on August 23?

Too many factors simply to let this go as coincidence (which we don't believe, anyway) or chance (how absurd). If I were to describe the full range of disappointment over the disqualification of the earlier trial, especially over something for which I had no control or answer, the relief of getting the radiation, all the while thinking the interim would bring answers to the liver enzyme and I would be able to get into the same trial, or at least another, since there were a couple of possibilities, would it help you see?

If then I told you how this new opportunity presented itself, that I was the perfect and only candidate, that the trial, while holding no guarantee of direct benefit to me but may provide answers for someone else, and that I had already been scheduled for it by the Georgetown team, would you think it a cool story? Folks, it is more than that. From the moment our appointment was over, I have been riding a high nearing euphoria that I don't think I have experienced at such intensity over the last fifteen months. I still am. And it seems there is no end of it.

Seeing God's handiwork, large and small this past week, has given me renewal that has impacted me on all levels of my being. I believe that, even with no guarantee for me, God worked this just for me to grow in my faith, trust in him completely, and to learn to wait on him. I have learned again to turn my eyes upon Jesus, and away from myself. And I have been taught further, that he knows best for me and those I love and will be sufficient in all his dealings with us. Good news for all.

So there it is. If you'd like to know more, please drop me a message: davenpoj@gmail.com. I am delighted to be allowed this and so many other opportunities to show forth our great God.

Another Appointment

Here I am again, staring down another appointment at the Lombardi Cancer Center of Georgetown University Hospital. This time we do have some questions we definitely will be asking. I think we might get answers to a few, but I don't anticipate answers to all. Swelling feet, ankles, and lower legs, the elevated liver enzyme, what about beginning real palliative care instead of the sort of ad hoc we're doing now, just to name a few. Unless we find otherwise, I expect this appointment to include flushing my Medi-Port and a consultation regarding the events since my August 23 appointment.

Overall, since that day, I have had mostly good days. There have been a few moments when depression began to rear, later in the evening, which of course then sours the remainder of the day. I do have a mild medicine to take to help, but it may need to be increased. I don't think I'd have to tell you that I am not happy about that. But so be it. I liked it better not actually noticing it's need was carried on by necessity. Too bad, though. I am beginning to wish for recommendations without a basis in error.

As we visit Georgetown tomorrow, please keep us in your prayers. This visit has the potential always to be frought with emotion, and while that is okay, that means it is often too consuming. your prayers have been so helpful and we continue to need your support daily. And we know that you are there because God continues his faithful work in all this for his glory.

The Day of the Lord

Friday, September 9, 2011. One day after completion of my second round of radiation treatment. This was a two-for-one deal. Both hips, even though the left hip lesions were smaller by far than the right hip. Twenty seconds of high intensity X-Ray on each hip both front and back for ten days. Strange it is that something like the chemo treatments and radiation treatments, both which introduced no small degree of anxiousness (for me) before the treatment began after just a few visits began to take on a comfortable and comforting familiarity that soon brings dread of the approaching day when that treatment cycle is complete.

We find that comfort wherever possible when faced with ever-mounting uncertainty, doubt and fear, I suppose. Not to be outdone the "comforting machine," we often work extra hard, if there is evidence in a payoff for our trouble. And all because our comfort is our chief aim. No, I know that there is much we all focus on as priority in life, and that changes just as often as the tide. When it comes to comfort, though, I believe it is a commodity we protect exhorbantly, many giving everything for comfort.

We are still broken. Praise God, for I believe it is precisely our brokenness that God uses to show us and work through us his perfect plan. But we become weary, forgetting that to wander far from God while trying to keep in his will, we lose sight of him, become "lost" and now are vulnerable to the enemy. In such a condition - helpless, weary, feeling beat down - we often forget how to even pray. We border on despair, not hearing his still, small voice calling out to us. It finds its way to our heart, and changes us. slowly, we are rejoined with our God in his camp, and recharging through our repentance for our sin.

This life is a fight. We do wage war, and there is a battle raging unseen. I feel it very close at times. But this I do certainly know: My God is victorious and the battle is his. I know the end of this story, and so I need not worry or despair. I am secure in him, belonging to him as a part of his adopted family. And I, along with all who believe in him and his son, the Christ, benefit from his faithful, loving care, even when we cannot see it humanly.

Throughout the past year and a few months, I would say I have seen the challenges to my faith grow exponentially. Even closer than I might've first imagined, these challenges have opened my eyes to the folly that so many take as wisdom. The fight extends beyond such, though, when it is called into question what you will believe in. It is easy, sometimes easy even in the moment just prior to the despair mentioned above in the midst of the battle, to claim God's abiding presence. But we're weak, and the strength sometimes eludes us.

He alone is able to sustain me in my comings and goings. Just Friday morning, I had a tangible event to show for the remainder of the day that God is good and his ways are perfect. I pray that each of us has our eyes opened to see, and hearts softened to receive his merciful provision to strengthen and sustain given by his grace at just the moment we need. I pray we will not falter, but show ourselves obedient to him in his day that is coming.

If It Ain't One Thing, It's Another

I did not appreciate some of the finer points of Saturday Night Live until well past it's prime (my opinion of it's prime only). While many in my school could and would recite the weekend's episode during the following week, I was clueless and didn't really get all the hubbub. Even now, if I watch an old episode, I smile at the clothes, laugh at the hair styles, and maybe a gag or two, but the impression left by those that made up the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players still escapes me today.

I only share that because so much of what passes as sound bites now are commandeered into our culture. Once locked there, there is a continuous use for as much laugh as can be gained. Thus we are somewhat insulated from nearly everything, if we should want that. This can be good, but more often not, when in our relationships, we much prefer our survivability, sometimes at the other's expense. One rapid jump to humor in it's biting form (sarcasm, satire) in our closest dealings and protection and preservation of self is now the goal.

What about the other? Isn't there a responsibility for them? Yes, beginning with the command to love your neighbor as yourself, but their are other such admonishments.

I might've mentioned my unqualified fear that once radiation was complete tomorrow, that we would find the medication isn't enough to manage the pain with further adjustment. My anxiety is that would impact Georgetown again. Firstly, all of that is just me and my fear. There is no evidence that can lead to such a result. But I have been increasingly aware of sensations that I had thought were tied to the pain in my hips. So I asked Dr Altemus. After assurances that what I was describing could not be the action of cancer, she looked back into my pretty thick file. There, on the MRI report from June: Degenerative Disc Disease.

We do finish with radiation on September 8. We will be meeting with Dr Pishvaian or Dr Hwang at Georgetown on Monday or Tuesday. They may order labs so we can see any change to the liver (originally before the edit was "lover") enzyme that disqualified me earlier. I believe, though, this will be more of a consult visit to determine possible options for the way ahead.

Thank you, Roseanne Roseannadanna. You're correct that it is always something. And even our planning, scheming, plotting, and preparation gets thwarted simply because we lack the one course that truly can make a difference in it all: faithful, obedient prayer and response to God. We still live that it must be us to make it through, to prove ourselves and gain his favor. The difference we can bring is a broken, contrite heart, softened (by God) to be his for his purpose, the first point being love for others.

Open our eyes, Lord, to see the work before us. Break us to be teachable and moldable for you and your work to your kingdom's ever sure increase. Empty us of our self-loving, guard us by your spirit against our selves when we feel inadequate. Empower us with your grace and mercy, that those we meet see you and your love for them. Amen.

Working for Prosperity

Labor Day 2011. It was so great to be at worship Sunday. Reminded once again the calling God has on me, on us. The thought of being sought by the creator of the universe, called from the darkeness to his wonderful light, equipped for the work he has called us to - his work, sharing in what he is doing - reconciliation, making things right, even in the place where he has us now. Sunday brought back into perspective Jeremiah 29:1-14. It reminded me of a few times when I felt out of place, or in a place I did not want to be. I responded like Jonah mostly, when I should have been a Daniel or Jeremiah.

Even into my cancer, and the struggle it has been, especially the anxiety of late: I must have his help daily to see what he has called me to for using this for him. I am woefully inadequate to speak, save for his influence to me, and so I hope always to be faithful. That he chooses us in our weakness to bear witness to him is more than humbling, because I fear my faults shine through far more than his mercy.

But his mercy is the cause of it all. Because he loves us . . . He is moved to pursue us, call us to himself, and we, turning to him in agreement that we have rebelled against him and deserve his just condemnation apart from Christ alone, then are given by grace through God's mercy Christ's salvation purchased for us on the cross. We are free now. No longer must we look at God as a sort of scale of justice, all our supposed good on one side, all our bad on the other with us in the middle to try to tip it in our favor. Think about it - we are still responsible for we have the truth, but we cannot effect our salvation anymore than if we could affect it. Christ's sacrifice is sufficient once and for all. He needs nothing from us. But he does want us for a blessing: in Micah 6:6-8,

What we do now is for the kingdom. Every vocation is a calling of the believer by God to work for the prosperity of the place where God has planted him. We work to shine the truth of the gospel into our everyday life. Worship is even individual and corporate. So must our understanding of integrating work and faith. We're in the world - with all it's brokenness, wrong, hurt, shame, pain and suffering to be a blessing . . . God's blessing to those who still need him. From this Labor Day and beyond, consider how God wants to use you for a blessing to the traveler about his kingdom.

My Fraility

Something very funny has been going on around the house for quite a while now. Beginning some years ago, when Caleb had just begun college or there-abouts, he and his siblings, talking with Cynth would respond back to her. Cynth would then respond to what she heard, which never fit the response from the kids, so they would all say to her, "Don't guess!" since then she has gotten better, or maybe the kids have just given up. Still there are moments when it seems both she and I cannot understand a word the other is saying, no matter how plain spoken.

As a child, I guess it was often funny to talk to my (maternal) grandparents, mainly my grandpa, because he had difficulty hearing plainly. It often made for very funny but embarrassing encounters, say in the church just about the time for the worship to start. But now here I am, as well as my lovely bride. Oh, I don't think there is anything much wrong with our hearing that an uncluttered mind wouldn't go to significant lengths to help. But it does provide food for thought.

Some of you know, but many may not, that the ultrasound which was ordered by the doctors at Georgetown to identify any blockage around the liver that could have contributed to the elevated enzyme and subsequent disqualification of the suggested trial last week, in fact showed no blockage of any type. There may in fact be perfectly normal processes that led to the rise, but we may not know until we go back to Georgetown later this month. So for now we complete the radiation, then on to Georgetown to see what to do next. As I said, though, this gives food for thought.

Since fourth grade I have worn corrective lens of one fashion or another for myopia and one of the many reasons I feel tremendously blessed to have had a career as a United States Air Force aircrew member. The myopia is instructive, also, because it gives me a ready illustration of my sin. Always looking inward, seeing all my faults, seeing (not yet fully) the depths of my depravity, and always seeing me in my worst, instead of God who is closer still. It is so much easier still to see me in my miserable state, than the glorious love and grace which is showered down on me. Is it not a wonder that God seems often distant, removed, even unapproachable?

But add to this the hearing difficulties, and you begin to get a sense of the human condition. I found today that this problem of hearing is likely the worse of the two. We want desperately to hear good tidings of great joy, but our eyes fool us that those tidings cannot be for us, or we're afraid to hope that they could mean all they could mean for us. So we "block" the hearing, stifle the waves of sound in a vain attempt at protecting ourselves from hurt.

It seems that I cannot even hear the words I wrote in my previous post. Saturday started off just fine. A morning clap of thunder gave way to one of those nice easy late summer morning storms with good rain. Then sunshine. Somewhere into the afternoon, though, I began to feel it. The shadows were forming and spreading doubt, fear, some anxiety, even depression, slowly over the remainder of the day. Just when I should revel in the comfort of God my father, I too easily gave way to the encroaching darkness, and soon, what had been so uplifting for me a day ago, though still profoundly meaningful, and right, now seemed so distant, foreign. The concepts God taught me, against the onslaught of the afternoon, I chose to turn from, not run to.

Would that God would be pleased to give me a softened heart, receptive ears, clear eyes that are turned and tuned to his perfect will and provision for me. I also pray for more grace and wisdom for Cynth as she helps me in this particular struggle.

Indefatigable Hugs

Now at the end of a week during which I expected somewhat of a relapse with the pain (past experience, you know) and I find pleasantly that I am feeling as well, maybe even a little better than last week at this time. After three days off last week to give the change in medicine a chance with increased rest, I have worked since last Friday, almost full days, too. It goes without saying, I think, but it is worth repeating that busy hands (minds, bodies, heart, spirit, etc.) are good for us. A lady I met yesterday at radiation is not being permitted to work by her employer - customer requirements, and all that. My heart goes out to her, although as a mother of five, and having used the time to complete a master's program, she has done well, I believe.

So, yes. The end of a full week of radiation, and I am feeling pretty good. Some experience with heartburn at bedtime, night sweats (again), otherwise, my eating has increased, so that according to my scales, I am back up about 5 or 6 pounds. Gotta start watching that.

Upon return from radiation Friday, Cynth pulled the truck into the cul-de-sac so that I could back it into the driveway. Two doors to the west is the home of Harry and Nancy Underhill, a nice couple that over the course of our time here we've known mostly from the street, occasionally talking about lawns, work, his Harley. Now we also know them as brother and sister in the Lord. They have been very sweet to check on us and this summer took extraordinary measures to make sure our lawn was mowed, even our back yard. Harry also is living with cancer, so we have had opportunity to talk about the journey of life God has each of us on.

Before I backed the truck into the driveway, I wanted to speak to him and let him know the latest. He always watches to see whether my truck is gone in the morning as a signal that I am at work. As I walked to him, I realized immediately a handshake would not do - so we hugged in the middle of the cul-de-sac before getting to the talk. There is something completely disarming about a hug. There should be more of it. Perhaps that is why the passages that illustrate you or I as being wrapped in the comforting arms of our loving heavenly father are so powerfully received when we read them.

Instinctively, an intimate touch - a hand on the shoulder to convey peace or comfort, or a hug to someone who really could use it - causes a reaction: a shying away, a diminishment of the circumstances surrounding the need for the touch, maybe even a rebuke, however slight. We similarly respond to God. He wants us to come to him as his children, bringing all of our stuff (fear, doubt, feelings of unworthiness) so he can be our father to us, wipe away our tears, comfort us by taking our hand and, often, leading where we do not want to follow. Sometimes we may see a glimpse of the road before, but we don't see it as he sees it. We see it with all the wrong, the hurt, the pain, the loss - the "what might have been," rather than the promises already fulfilled, the hope yet to come, and the faithfulness of father God who has given us everything, even his own son, as salvation for us.

Throughout the past fifteen months or so, as each new day passed bringing with it new words to learn, ever-changing expectations, new (medically), hopeful treatment, I have struggled with being open. Transparent. It is not easy. The factual stuff of terms, therapies, medical possibilities all are pretty easy to discuss. It is the harder matters about life, my hope in Jesus, my frailty - even in strength, my all-to-often ease to give in to the shadows that I find most difficult. I don't think I am alone on this, for I find many who work hard, far too hard, to keep things in, only to find after time that they've indeed kept themselves well that which they feared, only to later have no release for it but in the greys and shadows of tears and thoughts that they are now alone with.

I still struggle with being as transparent as I'd like about this. But all of you whom we love dearly keep giving Cynth and I hugs in unique and profound ways to continue to break through our defenses. On this journey of fifteen months (so far), it is me, Cynth, our kids, our extended families who acutely feel the power of your prayers, and your hugs. You also walk with us, bearing us up with the reserves of God's strength and blessings he has given you as blessings to us.

Thank you, and praise be to God for your indefatigable care. I think I'll have another hug now.